8.04.2006

Ignorance that makes your head hurt

An article from Raw Story details former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith's account of conversations the president had about Iraq just prior to the war.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Now I'm sure many Americans weren't aware of the distinction either before the Iraq war, and a lot of war supporters likely still aren't. However, they're not the ones sending our troops into harm's way.